Daemonic chariots arise triumphant – a battle report!
Today I played a 2,000 point game against a nid player. I ran a pure daemon list:
HQ:
Blue Scribes
Herald of Khorne on Skull Throne
Herald of Tzeentch on Burning Chariot
Elites:
4 Bloodcrushers of Khorne w/ Banner of Blood
Troops:
16 Bloodletters w/ banner of Blood
18 Daemonettes
Fast:
2 x 8 Hounds
3 Plague Drones w/ 3+ poison sting
Heavy:
Cavalcade of Slaanesh w/ 2 chariots and 1 exalted chariot
Skull Cannon
2 Bloodslaughterers w/ impalers
He ran a pretty typical nid army: Flyrant w/ twin-linked devourers, 2 blobs of 30 termagaunts, Tervigon, 2 groups of 2 zoanthropes, 2 venomthropes, Hive Crone, 2 ‘Fexes w/ dual twin-linked devourers in pods, and the plasma shooting MC (forget the name). Caveat to this report: He is a fairly new player and made some erroneous decisions that would haunt him.
We did black ops maelstrom mission (5) in a hammer and anvil deployment. He ended up going first. He advanced his units up, just outside of his gaunt’s range (18″ devourers) and shot up my hounds with his flyrant and made 15 gaunts with his tervigon but rolled doubles first turn. First turn I advanced into the hormagaunts and killed 19 on the assault with him out of assault range after the hammer of wraith. I also summoned 3 crushers with the scribes. He spread out to respond to the daemon advance, focusing heavily on the hounds and skull cannon that had killed 6 gaunts but ignoring my purchased crushers and gunned down the decoy crushers. My chariots killed 4 more gaunts before all the riders were killed, making back their points before dying (about 40 more points actually).
His second turn saw the first fex deepstrike in and almost kill the scribes, he killed the skull cannon, and a handful of dogs and a wound on the bloodletters. The chariot had the malefic power to improve invulns but he managed to keep it suppressed most turns. He wiped out the summoned crushers (as stated earlier) by dumping a lot into them. My turn I assaulted several units and made a staggering blow to his line. In a single turn he lost the remnants of the squad of gaunts, a squad of zoanthropes, and his carnifex (they died to the plague drones). Additionally I saw the writing on the wall concerning the scribes and was lucky enough to roll the greater daemon summoning and swapped him out for a great unclean one.
Third and fourth turns were just a bloodbath as he failed to focus fire on squads which allowed me to drive my forces into a tip and crush through his gaunt line, eliminating all of his rear-guard synapse beasties. Once they were no longer fearless, my crushers broke the last gaunts and the blood slaughterers dropped the tervigon.
He called the game after he realized I was up by 4 points (3 once secondary objectives applied) and we had 1 for sure turn remaining, meanwhile he had nothing left on the ground to secure objectives with, meanwhile I still had about half my army (daemonettes and letters were both about at 50-60% strength, all 3 of the crushers were alive, all the plague drones, the great unclean one, and about 12 hounds. Oh, and both of the blood slaughters were wandering around). It was a good game and my second game against him. I highlighted that a) flyrants get a total of 60- 84 shots the entire game and that with every unit being able to claim objectives, having every MC being shooty means that you have no recourse against assault armies once they pick up steam, b) when playing against an assault army, advancing far enough forward allowing me the charge can be catastrophic. Had he made me come to him, it is very reasonable to think that I very well may have lost that game. Overall, very fun game and I think he considered it quite fun as well. Looking forward to getting a game in with friends back at my old stomping ground though, which should hopefully be occurring in a few weeks.
Thanks for reading,
KI.
Progress on the Skull Cannon
So I have made progress on the skull cannon. Cleaned up the masked areas and did most of the highlights (minus the extreme highlights I will do at the end with mithril silver) and did the majority of the work on the riders. My intent is for the front two bloodletters to look lava-ish. However, I think I need to cover more of them with black and brown and have the reds and yellows be less apparent. Not sold on them currently. I also have designed and built a lava base as well as doing the first portion of the lava. Now I have to paint the rocks and skulls.
Well, thanks for reading,
KI
Nurgle on Nurgle…it’s almost fratricide!
So I finally got a chance to run my 1850 test list. I think I will only get a single shot at testing before the standish standoff, so I had to make it count. So I ran it against another Mono-Nurgle CSM force.
I ran-
Epidemius
GUO w/ breath
Typhus
7 plague bearers
7 plague bearers
14 plague bearers w/ Icon
14 cultists w/ autoguns and MoN
7 Warp talons w/ MoN (Champ with melta bombs) and Veterans of long war
7 Havocs w/ Vets of Long War, 2 Lascannons, 2 Missile Launchers with Flakk Missiles
DPoN w/ Wings, Armor, Noxious Touch, Cloud of Flies, and Breath of Chaos
He ran
Lord on Bike w/ Dimensional Key, Brand of Skalanthrax, Black Mace, MoN, Sigil of Corruption (that’s right, lotsa points)
20 cultists w/ MoN
20 cultists w/ MoN
10 CSM w/ MoN
7 CSM w/ MoN
Vindicator w/ siege shield
Land Raider
7 Bikers w/ MoN
5 Raptors w/ MoN
ADL w/ quad gun
We played the creative twilight game vengeance. He went first, I had my Havocs w/ Typhus and cultists on the table. Due to a poor deployment choice, my havocs were a weeee bit too close to the vindicator and it cost me a las cannon and a missile launcher turn one. Other than that he simply maneuvered some. My turn I then fired the havocs at the vindicator causing it to explode with my lascannon. My GUO and Epidemius with the 14 plaguebearers dropped in.
He, in his turn 2, got his raptors in and shot up my havocs and ended up killing two more. The bikers assaulted the GUO and would end up killing him after 3 assault phases in a challenge between the lord and the GUO. The GUO did put two wounds on him before he died. My turn 2 my talons came in and failed to blind the bikers (passed their I test). All my daemons would come in as well.
Now, the table was divided for most of the rest of the game:
Left side would be for three full turns the bikers, the talons, and the GUO. By the end of the 3rd turn, the bikers would have emerged from both assaults with only 2 wounds on the lord and 3 less bikers.
The right side saw my plaguebearers (all 3 squads) and DPoN sweeping through and destroying the smaller squad of CSM and both cultist squads.
Typhus and the havocs killed off the raptors in an assault.
He assaults a squad of 7 plaguebearers with his bikers on turn 4. The assault stagnates, allowing another squad to assault, killing off the rest as the tally is now to 20+.
This left him having only completely killed the talons and the GUO. In a last effort, he empties his land raider and shoots down the now swooping DPoN (well, it had 2 wounds left, and wounds with a melta gun and a bolt pistol…which I failed both saves for). Those CSM were dealt with by Typhus and a squad of 6 plague bearers. The Havoc champ attempts to use his powerfist to deal with the land raider but fails to do anything more than strip a single hullpoint off of it. The game ends with him having a landraider on the table.
I won with 11 kill points to his 5 (the DPoN was worth 3 by this point), controlling all 4 objectives, and controlling 3 table quarters to his 0. I also had a single unit left alive worth 3 or more KP (a Plaguebearer unit) meaning I won 31-0.
Overall, a great game, a good showing of Nurgle. He seemed to be pretty inexperienced and had never faced a tally list before. I gave him some pointers and he was pretty excited overall to have learned some new nifty tactics for Nurgle. I feel my Nurgle list is ready for the Standoff and will make a strong showing there. It’s no tournament winning list, but perhaps it will be good enough to get me a good place like 4th or 5th. Perhaps if the ruinous powers be with me I can walk away with peoples choice, though I won’t get my hopes up.
i have to finish painting. I feel I have made some good progress, but I have to finish my army, finish my display tray, and finish my competition models…so yeah, I gots some serious work to do.
Either way, I am really stoked for the event and generally can’t wait!
Thanks for reading,
KI
High Die 40K: battle reports, stories, WIPs 